Feinstein Opposes Verizon, AT&T Holding NSA Phone Records

Feinstein’s opposition is a major obstacle for lawmakers who see the proposal as a way to quell the public furor over U.S. spying, since her panel oversees the NSA. Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg

The California Democrat decided it would be too costly and
complex for companies to maintain the data after reviewing an
NSA analysis of how it would work, according to a committee aide
who wasn’t authorized to speak on the record.

“Senator Feinstein opposes storing the metadata with the
telecommunication companies themselves,” her spokesman, Brian
Weiss, said in a statement.

Feinstein’s opposition is a major obstacle for lawmakers
who see the proposal as a way to quell the public furor over
U.S. spying, since her panel oversees the NSA. While no
legislation has been introduced, the telecommunications industry
has been lobbying Congress and President Barack Obama’s
administration to defeat the idea before an expected debate next
month on curbing the NSA’s powers.

“If the government needs it, then the government should
figure out how to safeguard it,” said Jot Carpenter, vice
president of government affairs for CTIA-The Wireless
Association, a Washington-based trade group that represents the
wireless industry. Companies don’t want “to be the custodian of
that information for any longer than we need it.”

Some lawmakers and privacy advocates suggested companies
retain the bulk phone records after the NSA program was exposed
by former contractor Edward Snowden. Under the program, phone
numbers and call durations on millions of Americans are kept for
five years under a secret court order.

Phone Metadata

Proposals already introduced in the House and Senate would
require the NSA to get a warrant to search or obtain phone
metadata. The alternative approach would allow the NSA to query
databases kept by the carriers.

The NSA now retains the records in a central database. It
can query them only when analysts have reasonable suspicion to
believe a phone number is linked to a terrorist plot, according
to an Aug. 9 description published by the Obama administration.

Officials for New York-based Verizon have expressed their
concerns to the administration and lawmakers about being
required to keep the metadata, spokesman Ed McFadden said in a
phone interview. He declined to elaborate.

Spokesmen Michael Balmoris of AT&T and Anne Marshall of T-Mobile US Inc. declined to comment.

NSA Analysis

The NSA analysis presented to Feinstein found that
compelling the phone companies to retain the data would come at
a significant cost, the aide said in a phone interview.

It said the administration probably couldn’t compel the
companies to keep the data without legislation from Congress,
the aide said.

The analysis didn’t draw a conclusion, as that’s a matter
for policy makers to decide, the aide said. The aide declined to
reveal the cost estimate or other details of the analysis.

Companies would expect Congress to give them immunity from
privacy lawsuits over data breaches, Carpenter said. Costs
include setting up server farms to store the data and buying
software to protect the data and make it searchable, he said.

“You’re talking about a very significant volume of data”
and the carriers don’t “want to be in a situation where they
have to retain data any longer than necessary for their own
business purposes,” Carpenter said.

Privacy Concerns

Some lawmakers still favor requiring phone companies,
rather than the NSA, to retain the data and that may not change
with Feinstein’s opposition. Private storage would be less
invasive of Americans’ privacy rights because their
recordkeeping practices are known to customers, Representative
Adam Schiff, a California Democrat and member of the House
intelligence committee, said in a phone interview.

“There’s no reason the government needs to acquire all the
data if it can get what it needs by querying the
telecommunications providers,” Schiff said, who has led calls
in Congress to compel the companies to retain the data.

The proposal also has been raised by the Privacy and Civil
Liberties Oversight Board, a panel of citizens established to
ensure U.S. spy programs have appropriate privacy safeguards.

The Obama administration hasn’t yet weighed in on the
proposal. Obama remains open to changes in the phone metadata
collection program, which is carried out under Section 215 of
the USA Patriot Act, Caitlin Hayden, a White House spokeswoman,
said in a statement.

“He believes that we can take steps to put in place
greater oversight, greater transparency, and constraints on the
use of this authority and looks forward to working with the
Congress,” she said.

Snowden, the former NSA contractor now in Russia under
temporary asylum, exposed a classified legal order compelling
Verizon to turn over the phone records of millions of customers
to the NSA for use in counterterrorism operations. The records
played a role in preventing 12 terrorist attacks inside the
U.S., General Keith Alexander, the NSA Director has said.

A May 2012 internal audit leaked by Snowden found 2,776
cases of violations in the preceding year in collecting voice
and data communications of both Americans and foreigners. Legal
opinions declassified Aug. 22 show the NSA improperly
intercepted as many as 56,000 Internet communications by
Americans a year between 2008 and 2011 until the Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Court ordered the practice stopped.